She went on into a conversation with Leslie, relative to the move. After a few moments Norma went out through the opened French window onto the wide porch. It was rather a dark, old-fashioned side porch, with an elaborate wooden railing, and potted hydrangeas under a striped awning. The house had neither the magnificence of Annie's gray-stone mansion or the beauty of Leslie's colonial white and green at Glen Cove; it had been built in the late eighties, and was inflexibly ornate.
Norma went down slowly through the garden, and walked vaguely toward the hot glitter and roll of the blue sea. Her misery was almost unbearable. Weeks—it would be weeks before she would see him! He had been here to-day—here in the garden—in Alice's room, and she had not had a word or a sign.
Children and nurses were on the beach, grouped in the warm shade. The season was over, there were yellow leaves in the hedges, Norma's feet rustled among the dropped glory of the old trees. The world seemed hot, dry, lifeless before her.
"I wish I were dead!" she cried, passionately, for the first time in her life.
CHAPTER XXI
Suddenly and smoothly they were all transported to town again, and the vigour and sparkle of the autumn was exhilarating to Norma in spite of herself. The Park was a glory of red and gold leaves; morning came late, and the dew shone until ten o'clock; bright mists rose smoking into the sunlight, and when Norma walked home from a luncheon, or from an hour of furious squash or tennis at the club, the early winter dusk would be closing softly in, the mists returning, and the lights of the long Mall in the park blooming round and blue in the twilight.
She was with Mrs. Melrose this winter, an arrangement extremely welcome to the old lady, who was lonely and liked the stir of young life in the house. Alice had quite charmingly and naturally suggested the change, and Norma's belongings had been moved away from the little white room next to Miss Slater's.
One reason for it was that Alice had had two nurses all summer long, and found the increased service a great advantage. Then Mama was all alone and not so well as she had been; getting old, and reluctant to take even the necessary exercise.